Week 26 Plastic Waste

It has been 2 weeks since my last tally, and there's kind of a lot to report. Here goes:

- Olive Oil cannister and plastic cap
- cap for a vanilla bottle (red)
- fruit sticker (representative sample- there were more)
- 2 windows from pasta boxes
- blue magic marker cap
- plastic wine cork, Ecco Domani
- generic Cetaphil (facial cleanser) bottle and pump
- plastic wrap from a newish bottle of facial cleanser
- chicken broth TetraPak
- Bob's Red Mill flax meal bag
- a bag that once held rugelach, but now holds the remnants of THREE credit cards
- a Diet Coke bottle and cap

Olive oil: the big cans last me several months, and I feel that is the best way for me to purchase it. The can gets recycled. Vanilla cap: next time I'll look for a larger bottle with a metal cap, or at least a larger bottle. Sometime I should try making my own. Cap goes to Aveda. Fruit sticker: comes on all citrus around here, except lemons and limes. I wonder why. Trash. Pasta box windows: I still have a few odds and ends of pasta to use up and might just get a jar of sauce and finish them off in the next couple weeks. Trash.

Magic marker cap: found while emptying the cabinets when my roommate moved out. Trash. Wine "cork": Beth keeps a list of wines with the kind of cork or cap they use. What is easier for me though is to follow my friend Kate's advice and go for bottles with metal caps. She assures me there are some good ones at Trader Joe's, and she is much fussier about wine, so she should know. Cork goes to the trash. Facial cleanser: I opened up one last small bottle of facial cleanser. It will take me a long time to use up, but when I do I'm changing to a non-plastic option. Goats milk soap? Olive oil soap? I'm open to suggestions. I have fussy, sensitive skin! Bottle gets recycled, pump and wrapping go to the trash. Chicken broth: still have a couple of these lurking in the cabinet. Not a huge fan of store bought broth and will be happy to return to homemade, or bouillon cubes in a pinch. TetraPak gets recycled.

Flax meal bag: I can get whole flax seeds in loose bulk sections. Rugelach bag: my roommate had them around on her moving day, and I ate the last few and kept the bag. They were yummy. But only fyi- plastic free rugelach is pretty easy to come by at many if not most bakeries in NYC. I didn't know what rugelach was before I moved here! Bags go to the trash

Credit cards: Oof. This is a lot of stupid plastic waste, most of it my fault. Two of the cards are from when I lost my wallet last fall, the very night I started this blog. It was miraculously returned to me intact by a neighbor the next evening. Yay, neighbor! But by that time the cards had been reported lost and they sent me new ones. This week I finally got around to activating the new cards and replacing them in my wallet, which says something about how often I use them. The third card came from when Amex discontinued IN:NYC and sent out the latest version of their equivelant card. I wasn't pleased since I had -just- gotten a new replacement Amex. Cards go to the trash.

Diet Coke bottle and cap: another mistake on my part. I stayed late at work and they ordered dinner. I was all fake virtuous, getting a paper wrapped deli sandwich, and shifting the guilt for the bag onto the other people who were getting food as well. Then I ordered a can of Diet Coke, because I saw someone else drinking a soda and wanted one- even though I know the cans are coated in plastic on the inside, and I could have had water in my Kleen Canteen. Well, the deli sent a plastic bottle, not a can. And you know what? It didn't taste that good. Maybe someday I'll stop craving soda, but I still want it now and then. Bottle gets recycled curbside, cap goes to Aveda.